Two

Annette

I ate dirt as a child. Nothing grew the summer I turned six; Vaser’s dry fields filled only with cicada husks. Lord Sun had not been merciful, giving us endless days of heat without rain, and Monsieur Waleran du Ferrant, comte de Champ, whose family watched over our lands, hadn’t sent near enough help. Maman was pregnant with Jean, Papa was busy working, and Macé was seven and going through a growth spurt, crying till I gave him my supper. I’d cried too, but quiet, and pulled at my sides like I’d be able to pry open my ribs and scratch the hunger out of me. I’d been a good sister, then, and dirt was better than Macé crying. Tasted like the air after Alaine’s funeral pyre.

“Your family must be proud.” The shopkeeper smiled up at me and handed over the little satchel of everything Macé would need in Serre. “A varlet. There’s a good career for a country boy.”

I was not a good sister now.

“They’re very proud of him,” I said, tucking the packet into my bag. It wasn’t a lie. They were. Of him. “He’s leaving next week, and I’ll be sad to see him go.”

I’d be sad to see him go alone.

It was supposed to be us going—to university, not to Serre—to be hacks. We were supposed to study together, him the noonday and me the midnight arts, so we could both get jobs channeling magic for some rich artists who wanted all the results without getting worn down. I was supposed to go with him.

I’d always known I wasn’t as good as him, but I didn’t think Maman would make me stay in Vaser. Figured she’d be happy to see me go.

Probably why I’d been sent to pick up his supplies in Bosquet.

“Thank you,” I said. “There a baker in town? I’m supposed to buy him something sweet to celebrate.”

Our parents wanted to have a nice dinner before he left, and make sure he had some nice things to take with him so he wouldn’t be too out of sorts from the others training to assist the chevaliers. So long as no one asked him to do something that required paying attention for longer than five minutes, Macé would make a good varlet. Macé would be a step above a hack, helping Chevalier Waleran du Ferrant stay alive and channeling the noonday arts for him during fights so his noble body didn’t wear down too fast. They were honorable, varlets.

They were worth the money and time and sacrifice. I wasn’t.

The shopkeeper told me how to find a baker—said Bosquet was too small for a proper pâtisserie, which I didn’t believe for one second because there were more people and buildings here than I’d ever seen. As I’d left his store, he said, “Good luck to your brother, girl.”

I froze.

“You’re not as good as you think you are, girl,” Maman had said yesterday morning. We’d been standing in the root cellar, she and I. The magic I’d been gathering to scry the day’s weather had scattered when I heard her steps, and I itched to draw it all back to me and lose myself in the one thing I knew for sure. “Your brother’s real good. The comte de Champ offered him this, and chances like these are once in a lifetime.”

I’d run my finger along the rim of my bowl and refused to look at her. “He’s not that good.”

“Annette Boucher, keep that jealousy out of your mouth, or I’ll wash it out.” She’d bent over me, wobbling, and patted my cheek too hard. Like she’d forgotten how. “We’re family, and family makes sacrifices. Now, you’re going to Bosquet and picking up what he needs. You can get something small for yourself too.”

She never asked. Just watched. She narrowed her eyes, the little crinkles of age bundled up in the corners like a handful of nettle cloth.

Bosquet was so much bigger than home. I slipped through one of the narrow alleys between two towering buildings, and wrapped and unwrapped my necklace around my fingers. The market was taking advantage of school starting up too, and nearly every available space was someone selling something. Country people brushed past rich merchant kids, and a rich girl glittering like gold in mud stopped at a stall serving food from our eastern neighbor Kalthorne. She bought dumplings topped with poppy seeds and dripping plum jam for her and her guards. She was nice at least.

She was still one of those destined for school, though. They’d use hacks, country kids like me who had magic but no money for training, to channel Mistress Moon’s power for them. They’d get to do the magic with none of the consequences.

How noble.

I stopped, a rock in a river of people who couldn’t care less about me. I couldn’t see the end of the market, and the rows of trees leading past it were spotted with couples and families resting in the shade. A stall next to me sold sage water faster than the identical twins distributing it could pour, and the twin on the other side of the stall, clothed in a dusky purple and so focused on her work that her look of concentration made me feel like I should be working, lifted a jar of honey to the sunlight. A ribbon of power burned in it, the midnight arts trapped in a lemon slice. I leaned closer to get a better look.

“Drink it right before you need the illusion,” the girl said. “It’ll make it last a few minutes more than normal.”

There were three types of midnight arts—illusions, scrying, and divining—and illusions were the easiest to master. Scrying was harder, but it let you observe what was happening anywhere in the present, so long as you had a looking glass to see through and knew what you were looking for. The hardest art, divining the future, showed artists all the different possible futures and let them puzzle out which one was true. Most artists never mastered it.

I’d never been trained in the midnight arts, but I could do them without wearing myself down too fast like most people. Even on dark, new-moon nights, magic called to me, thrummed in my heart and urged me to use it. Magic was the only thing that wanted me.

“Something small,” I muttered to myself, walking away from the stall and onto the gravel-lined path beneath a line of trees. The interlaced branches were a blessing for my sunburned skin. There’d been no shade on the walk here. “Something small.”

At the end of the wall was a crowd, and a kid holding a twig like a knife ran past me.

“Ask her where Laurel is!” someone shouted after the kid. “I want that five-hundred-lune reward on his head.”

“Like His Majesty would ever pay up,” someone else shouted. “Ask her how to join Laurel.”

I took off for the crowd. Vaser got news two days late and two truths off, but everyone was waiting for news of Laurel. They’d started a petition for the king to release how much money the crown was spending, called the king a coward when he hadn’t answered, and pamphlets had started peppering Demeine with copies of nobles’ ledgers too specific to be fake. Papa had clucked and said they had a death wish. Macé had talked about nothing except the reward money His Majesty had offered up for Laurel’s capture. Not even the royal diviner Mademoiselle Charron had been able to find them.

I nudged my way to the front of the crowd till I could read the evergreen words on the parchment.

MADEMOISELLE GARDINIER,

WITH GREAT THANKS TO THE GENEROUS DU FERRANTS,

IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE

MADEMOISELLE ESTREL CHARRON, ROYAL DIVINER

TO HIS MOST BRIGHT MAJESTY HENRY XII,

WILL BE PROVIDING HER SERVICES AS A MIDNIGHT ARTIST FOR THREE DAYS TO THOSE IN NEED

OF SCRYINGS AND DIVINATIONS.

THE SESSIONS WILL BE HELD AT TOWN HALL AND BEGIN AT DUSK.

Estrel Charron was here. The best midnight artist in the country, the only royal diviner of this century not born from a noble family, was in Bosquet. And I could see her.

I twisted my necklace till the silver crescent moon was pressed against my palm and drew out the magic I had hidden in it. Solane, who’d been a physician’s hack before moving to Vaser for safety when the court and university started going after those “outside of Lord Sun’s dawn and Mistress Moon’s dusk and upsetting the traditional order,” had taught me how to do it. Solane had said I had promise. They were nice to lie.

I read through the poster again, certain I’d missed something, and rubbed my eyes. The words itched at me, a little twitch on the back of my neck. Someone had written over the poster in red ink and hidden it with an illusion, ensuring that any artists, no matter how untrained, would be able to see the red message for at least three days. After that, the magic stored in the paper to fuel the illusion would wear down the poster. It’d rot before anyone without magic even noticed the secret note.

A KING CANNOT REST ON HIS LAURELS

NOT ALL ARTISTS DIE YOUNG

ONLY COMMON HACKS DO

WHY

A dripping red crown of laurel leaves had been painted above the words.

It was the symbol and call of Laurel, but they couldn’t be in Bosquet. And why were they writing over Mademoiselle Charron’s papers? She didn’t use hacks.

Nearly all artists rich enough to afford them did. Magic corrupted, wearing down the bodies of artists who channeled it, so people paid country kids to channel for them. The artists directed the magic, but the hack bore the brunt of the power. After a few years of channeling, the hacks’ bodies broke down till they couldn’t channel or died. The artists were fine.

Most of Laurel’s posters said using hacks was amoral. They were right, but being right wasn’t much good when the folks we were up against had armies and weapons and decades of training in the arts. Without training, an artist channeling too much could wear their body to nothing but bone dust in a few days. I mouthed the words to myself.

A king cannot rest on his laurels. A king could rest on an army with weapons and magic, though.

“Wouldn’t you love to meet her?” some girl next to me asked.

Didn’t matter what I wanted. Maman and Papa would send people after me if I didn’t get Macé’s things home. “Love to, but it’s tomorrow, and I’ve got to be home tonight.”

“What if I could offer you the chance to not only meet her but learn from her?”

I turned to tell her to jog off, but the words stuck to my teeth. “What?”

She was all full moon, the sort of pretty only money could buy. Her silver dress was cinched tight, showing off the thick curves of her waist and hips, and a spill of pearls like snowfall was sewn into the silk. She’d long, brown hair twisted into an intricate crown of braids that were so slick, they looked fake. A signet ring, one of five, glittered on her left hand.

“I am Emilie des Marais, comtesse de Côte Verte, and I’m supposed to start my training at Mademoiselle Gardinier’s today. I would much rather study the noonday arts at university,” she said, as if comtesses said those sorts of things to me every day. She smiled, red paint smeared on her white, rich teeth, and all I could think about was how Maman would’ve chided me for such poor dress and manners. “How would you like to pretend to be me and study the midnight arts at Mademoiselle Gardinier’s with your beloved Estrel while I take your last name and study the noonday arts?”

I’d no words for this.

Was I even allowed to say no? Did I want to?

“It will be dangerous, and I will do what I can to protect you if we are caught,” she said, voice low, “but some dangerous things are worth the risk.”

Nobles never risked anything. Only we did. We studied and learned, and none of it mattered because they used us as hacks and wore down our bodies before we hit thirty. Even midnight artists channeling Mistress Moon’s mercifully gentle powers died sooner than later.

Midnight artists observe the world. You’ve already proven that’s too much responsibility for you.

Maybe the world was as it was because we’d let folks do things without looking too closely at them for so long. Maybe Maman wasn’t looking hard enough at me.

But I could make her see me.

“Yes.” I nodded, glancing round. No soldiers. No chevaliers. “Yes.”

“Brilliant.” She looked back, gaze on a carriage bright as the sun, and touched my hand. “I only have a moment before my mother wakes up, but she will walk me to Mademoiselle Gardinier’s estate and leave me there, assuming I will not be foolish enough to run off without money or a plan. However, if you meet me in the gardens, I can tell you everything you need to know.”

Pulling away, she yanked a silver cuff prettier than anything I’d ever seen from her wrist. One of her hands was raw and red, the skin looked like it had been burned. Least she hadn’t worn herself out too much. Her body could fix that.

“Understood?”

I nodded. “You’ll have to send my family what I bought today. So long as they get everything back, they won’t look too hard for me.”

“Of course.” Her nose twitched, and not even the red paint on her lips could pretty her scowl. “I can complete whatever tasks are necessary.” Her expression shifted back to a wide smile. Mistress, this girl was fickle as fire. “Meet me near the cherry trees. If they don’t let you in, tell them you saw a girl drop this and wish to give it to Mademoiselle Gardinier yourself because there’s magic in it, and you don’t want it to hurt anyone.”

She pressed the silver cuff into my hand and darted away before I could speak. I tucked it into my purse.

Only a noble would throw away being a noble, but this was everything I’d ever wanted. Even if I were only there for a day, I’d come out knowing more than I did today.

And Estrel Charron was there.

She was as common as me and a genius. I could learn to be like her.

I could see the world and make it see me.